A few months ago, I met with three prospective clients and a mentee, all of whom told me, unsolicited, that they were, or were striving to be, “partners to the business.”  At the end of the week, I sat looking at my notes and noticed that they were all different profiles, with different visions for their roles.  

That variation made me question what it means to be a “partner to the business.”

Legal roles exist on a contribution spectrum spanning from “siloed lawyer” to “enterprise steward.” Placement on that spectrum depends on skill possession and deployment. “Partner to the business” points to a different type of categorization based on an individual lawyer’s perception of their role’s definition. 

The four people I spoke to that week were plotted at different points on that spectrum, and as I worked with each person, it was clear they did not share a consistent definition of the word partner.  Even more clear was the fact that, in some cases, they did not share the same definition with their executive colleagues.  Nevertheless, each had a desire, a longing, to contribute more strategically in a way that others in the business valued.  

I recognized that longing.  I started to describe myself as a “partner to the business” when I was a mid-level attorney.  I meant to signal that I was ready to learn the magic beyond the law that others in my company seemed to understand.  I wanted to be a lawyer who didn’t say no, who didn’t slow initiatives down, who could participate in larger strategic discussions.  By that time, I was a strong commercial and securities lawyer, but I still acted as though my influence stopped at the boundary of legal and business.  The impulse that led me to signal that I was ready to go beyond the law was met by an opposite force encouraging me to stay in my legal lane.  

The push-pull that I experienced as I crafted my personal definition of partner was hardly unique to me.  It reflected a similar push-pull in the industry that started long before I became a lawyer.   

Corporate counsel occupied a prominent place in many early twentieth‑century corporations. According to Carl D. Liggio, Sr. (former general counsel of Arthur Young/Ernst & Young and founding member of the Association of Corporate Counsel), a significant share of CEOs were lawyers, general counsel were among the highest‑paid executives, and in‑house lawyers were treated as core business advisers.  That status eroded in the decades after World War II as finance and marketing ascended and corporate counsel “lost ground” through the 1960s and 1970s.  As in-house counsel lost status in both their companies and the bar associations, their roles began to be described as “parking places” and their lawyers were described as “kept.” 

That began to change in the 1980s as in-house lawyers mounted what legal scholar Robert Rosen described as a political movement within the legal profession.  A handful of general counsels used economic, substantive, and professional arguments to agitate for increased in-house counsel authority and prestige within both their corporations and the bar.  

Ben Heineman Jr. at General Electric was a leader in this movement, contending that internal lawyers understood the business better than any outside firm ever could and should take more control of significant work. The general counsel, Heineman argued, should be entrusted with the role of being both a partner to the business in achieving its objectives, and a guardian of its long-term reputation and values. 

Board directors agreed.  Robert Rosen recounts that Karl Bays, then chairman of Baxter Travenol Laboratories (now Baxter International), remarked in 1986 that the profession needed lawyers who were truly accountable for their influence on decisions, not advisors who loved authority but avoided responsibility.

Voices arguing for increased impact won, supported by organizations like the American Corporate Counsel Association (now Association of Corporate Counsel), which was founded to “raise the sights of in-house counsel and provide a unified voice for our profession” (Association of Corporate Counsel website quoting founding member Gray Castle).  This new view became “orthodoxy” by the late 1990s and paved the way for more prestige within the bar and span of control within corporations.  In 2021, the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession pointed to a growing trend of general counsel being elevated into roles well beyond law, and according to statistics published in 2025 by BarkerGilmore, the chief legal officer role grew nearly 200% between 2011–2024.  

Yet despite the increased prominence, not all in-house counsel would step consistently into that new role.  

In a 2000 study in Law & Society Review, Robert L. Nelson and Laura Beth Nielsen identified three profiles into which in-house counsel sorted themselves: cops who police their company’s conduct and often act as gatekeepers, counselors who are anchored in the law and willing to make non-legal suggestions, and entrepreneurs who view their work as a business driver. The legal profession was negotiating its own identity. 

While the profession worked to increase its autonomy, broader corporate restructuring trends like downsizing, outsourcing, and the financialization of management were reshaping how organizations used every function, including legal. Cross-functional project teams replaced standing structures. Internal functions were benchmarked against outside providers. Project teams had discretion to hire professionals and technicians outside of the country, creating competition and opportunity for in-house and outside counsel.  In that environment, independent professional judgment, Rosen warned, was becoming less important than organizational compatibility. He argued that the professionalism gains of the previous decade were more fragile than they appeared.

The term “partner to the business” has roots in all of this history. It is capacious enough to take into account different profiles:  Heineman's guardians and partners, gatekeeping cops, hybrid counsel, business-forward entrepreneurs, and all the combinations that emerged. In fact, my four conversations a few months ago gave me three distinct profiles.  The public company lawyer and the lawyer with a fantastic bench of deputies were entrepreneurs, and good examples of Heineman’s partner-guardians.  The lawyer focused on regulatory scrutiny was a gatekeeper, and the first-time GC was a counselor.  

A word that can hold all of those meanings simultaneously is broad enough to hold none of them. It is a standard eroded into a slogan. That is how it became orthodoxy. That is why it rings empty to me today.

Lawyers today have access.  According to the 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey, 84% of CLOs now report directly to the CEO and 79% almost always attend board meetings. 

And yet, despite having that access, the share of CLOs who are "almost always" consulted on strategic business decisions is at 62%, more than a majority but by no means ubiquitous. More tellingly, when asked where they believe they are making the greatest impact, only 25% said advising the CEO and 24% said contributing to the business strategy. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that 56% of CLOs say they are strengthening their role as a strategic business partner. There are those words again:  business partner, with its wide distribution of profiles.   

Here’s where to start.  

These skills are not peripheral to the practice of law. They are part of the practice of law, every bit as important as substantive dexterity. Legal leaders will approach them differently depending on where they are on the contribution spectrum and what their companies need at any particular moment, but the work itself is integral to every role we occupy.  

The phrase “partner to the business” persists because it resolves a real anxiety. Legal leaders have spent careers fighting the perception that they are mere cost centers, and they have done so as corporate organizational and management trends have waxed and waned.  The phrase reaches for a narrative to find and maintain a strategic foothold.  It cannot, however, carry the argument.

Current chief legal officers recognize this.  When asked what skills they believed their CEOs wanted them to develop, 34% said business acumen, 29% said industry knowledge, and 25% said financial acumen.  

The good news is in-house counsel have the access, skills, and narrative to step into the roles Heineman and others described.  This is the time to do it.  Forty-seven percent of CLOs identify technology and AI knowledge as a priority, a reflection of how quickly the landscape is moving and how much is at stake for those who fall behind.  The path that Heineman offered a generation ago shows the way: gain the intelligence and breadth to understand the business's products, competition, and markets as deeply as any other senior leader at the table. Heineman's partner wanted accountability, not relevance. He measured the role by outcome, not by whether the lawyer showed up as cop, counselor, or entrepreneur.  That isn't reserved for one particular profile or one particular point on the contribution spectrum. It's available to all practitioners.

Own the outcome. That is the profile worth building.

— delida

If you've ever opened a draft budget and found your headcount ask reduced to a rounding error because someone focused on what legal cost instead of what it could produce, you already know what happens when you wait for the enterprise strategic planning process to define you.

FY2027 planning season is closer than it feels. I'm working with a few clients right now to build their point of view before the corporate process forces the question. It's a different conversation to have in in August, September, October than it will be in February or March.

One way to get ahead of it is to start early. Before the corporate planning cycle opens, when the pressure is off and this year's data is still fresh, ask yourself this question: what are the one, two, or three financial results your function can impact next year? Don't think about initiatives or work streams. Focus on results connected to what the organization owns, earns, or how money moves through it. An example could be a contract renegotiation that protects an asset (own), a licensing deal that contributes to revenue (earn). Most significant legal work touches at least one of those three areas.

Starting planning early gives you more than talking points . It also gives you the ability to walk into the planning conversation prepared to use financial vocabulary and concepts from the start. That’s a different entry point to the planning conversation, and so much better than trying to convince others about legal’s value after the fact.

Ever sat in a budget meeting while finance talked DSO and free cash flow, and felt like you were watching a conversation in a language you don't speak? This post is about changing that — a two-metric framework that turns what legal does into numbers finance already trusts, so you're in the conversation instead of watching it.

Paragon Legal released The New GC Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Thriving in the General Counsel Role — and included my perspective twice. One quote opens the GC Playbook section: “the top legal seat makes you a business leader first, and the sooner you make that shift in how you think, communicate, and show up, the more effective you'll be.“ If you know a new GC or even a GC who has been in the seat for a while, send it their way. It’s a terrific resource and Paragon Legal has made it complimentary.

Not A Thought Leadership Newsletter is a a quarterly newsletter for general counsels, chief legal officers, legal leaders — and the executives who work alongside them.

Through Monarch Road Advisors, I work with senior legal leaders on strategic positioning, financial fluency, and executive influence. This comes from my own years in the seat, watching lawyers — myself included — do brilliant legal work and still get left out of the room. I built my way in. Now I show others how to do it faster.

If something in here landed, hit reply. I read every one.